


Emergency Broadcast System

by StripedSunhat



Series: Single Father Klaus [16]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Bombs, Gen, Klaus is a troll, Mind Games, Spies, Why Gil needs therapy, Why Klaus needs therapy, Why Sparks need therapy, we already knew that though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 09:39:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18518818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripedSunhat/pseuds/StripedSunhat
Summary: The facts, should you choose to believe them, are as such.A contingent ofmany heavily armed soldiersa few spies have infiltrated the airship.Gil has a hammer.Jacob's retirement is imminent and Boris does not know all his tricks yet.There is a bomb aboard the airship.Klaus is testy.One of these facts is important.One of them is a lie.





	Emergency Broadcast System

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, while most of this was written in the last week, I've had the last scene of this written, largely unchanged, with only minor polishing, since I started this series.  
> Also, please enjoy my bad puns while I amuse myself.

The day started with alarm klaxons. Or at least Gil’s day started with alarm klaxons. Klaus had already been up for more than two hours, had met with five of his advisors and was working his way through a stack of paperwork. Since Gil had spent the night in the family quarters Klaus had a perfect view of Gil flailing off the couch and landing on his face. (Gil had a bedroom. He’d had one since before there was a Castle Wulfenbach. Just a half-finished airship with little pockets of safety. Then the school had been finished and now he hadn’t spent more than five consecutive minutes in it since then.)

Gil scrambled upright, blindly reaching for the first thing that could be used as a weapon. He ended up with a ballpein hammer, twisting it awkwardly around to get a better hold on it. “Father?” he asked when he caught sight of Klaus.

Klaus finished rearranging the reports he’d just made and looked up. “Gil.”

Gil clutched the hammer like a particularly violent security blanket. “The castle’s under attack from a heavily armed hostile incursion force! Shouldn’t you be out there doing something?”

“The castle isn’t under attack from a hostile incursion force.”

“Um, yes it is. I know what the different alarms sound like.”

“I told them to sound that alarm.”

Gil blinked once. He blinked again. He plopped back down on the couch in a half-boneless sprawl. His gaze remained sharp though and he didn’t relinquish his grip on his hammer. Good boy. “So… it’s a test for the crew.”

“Not exactly,” Klaus hedged. “There is a group currently attempting to infiltrate the airship but it’s a small group, no more than seven people, probably less. It’s doubtful they’re all that heavily armed; they seem to be going more for stealth.” He passed the new files over to his son.

Twirling the hammer idly in his hands he scanned the information. “We have an alarm for that too.”

“You tell me. What would be the reason for setting off a different alarm than the proper one?”

“Couldn’t you hold off on the testing until there aren’t literal attackers creeping through the airship?”

“Multitasking.”

Klaus would be more annoyed by the annoyed downward twitch of Gil’s lips giving away his feelings if he in any way thought Gil was trying to hide them. “The intruders won’t know what the alarm means, they’ll just know it’s an alarm. It’ll spook them. They won’t know… but the crew will. Once the intruders realize the crew is preparing for a larger, better armed and generally more impressive force they’ll have an opportunity. By sticking to smaller, harder to access areas that a proper army wouldn’t be able to navigate they’d be able to avoid detection from all the soldiers. So the rank and file soldiers will actually be herding them where you want them. It’ll cut down on the amount of places you need to actually search. And then once you get a lock on them your spies can track them wherever they go.” Gil passed the papers back to Klaus. “Although I imagine you still have someone wandering around taking note of which crew members run around like decapitated chickens.”

Klaus hastily arranged his face into a ‘contemplating the empire’ glower to hide his smile. “Very true.” He sorted out part file and handed it back to Gil then strode over to the door before Gil could finish looking it over. “I’m giving you the fifth quadrant on the far east side of the ship.”

“Wh– Father I’m not qualified to –”

“Make sure it’s cleared out and secured,” he called out over his shoulder as he left. “Report back to me when you’re done.”

“Father!” But he was already out the door. That was the secret when dealing with Gil; never give him time to argue.

The section Klaus gave Gil included the school – was basically nothing but the school honestly. It was a risk, true, to put him in charge where his classmates could potentially find out but not quite so big of one as it might usually be. Besides, it’s one of the smallest, heaviest guarded sections he can give him. (More to the point it’s controllable. Which means Klaus can do what he needs to get done.) He assigned Jacob to keep pace with Gil and keep him apprised – a much smaller job than his usual but retirement is looming somewhere in his future and Klaus needs to start weaning some time. Boris was taking over Jacob’s usual jobs (yes, all of them) as a sort of trial run.

Multitasking.

The first three reports were fine. Boring, standard, **safe.** Gil hadn’t managed to let anything blow up yet. Good for him.

Then.

 _Then_ the forth report came in.

Because of course it did.

Someday, Klaus will disabuse his son of the notion that he can get away with things that would get anyone else thrown off the airship.

* * *

“You evacuated the school?”

Gil glanced over from where he’s orchestrating the small knot of underlings and minions in the know Klaus had assigned to him. “Hello to you too, Father.”

“Don’t try to be cute Gilgamesh. It doesn’t work.”

With a sigh and an eye roll – immature, he needed to remember to work on Gil’s bearing in front of underlings – Gil turned to fully face Klaus. “Yes, I evacuated the school. I used evacuation protocol 3Q-B12 so it fed into your story that an armed –”

“What the hell were you even thinking?” The minions very wisely darted away and made themselves useful elsewhere, out of earshot. “That amount of people –”

“I’d never try evacuating the school if it was full. It’s nearly empty right now. As part of your plan to smoke out potential dissenters, remember? Almost all the students are off the airship entirely. That’s why I was able to spend the night in your quarters.”

“They’re the family quarters,” he said, voice dragging on the well worn argument, “and you know you’re welcome to spend the night in your room there whenever you want.”

“Not if I don’t want classmates asking too many questions about me. That would break the prime directive of my childhood.”

“What did I just say about trying to be cute? But getting back to the point on hand. Why did you evacuate the school?”

“It’s pretty clear they didn’t come here to assassinate or kidnap one of the students. For one all the intelligence says they haven’t been anywhere close to the school. For another this is literally the worst time to try ever – their target might not even be on the airship and even if they are the school’s under just as much protection as usual but with less students to keep track of. So since we can assume they aren’t trying their hand at the third worst kidnapping or fifth worst assassination attempt this airship has seen that makes the school a low value target. Emptying out the school cuts down on the usable hiding places and pathways by a third. And since even the secret passageways in the school were designed to be monitored –” Klaus made a vague noise of protest – of course it was true but Gil wasn’t supposed to know about it. “Yes of course I know they’re monitored, Father. Why do you think I never sneak out using any of them? Give me some credit.” Klaus let his jaw snap shut and made a note to review the monitoring on the routes Gil did use to sneak around. “Anyway,” Gil continued, oblivious to Klaus’s thought process, “since they’re meant to be monitored, it furthers the number of spies needed to watch the entire area by half. It means the school can be entirely locked down while freeing up resources for parts of the airship where they’re actually likely to go.”

“And if their target is in fact the school?”

“I left one pathway cutting through school ‘overlooked’. And if they do cut through the school, it triggers a watch shift with lots of opportunity for ‘human error’.”

“You’ve actually thought about this ridiculous plan, haven’t you?” Klaus begrudgingly ground out.

Gil nodded, impudence fading away in an instant. He fumbled for one of the files in his hand. “I wrote all of it down in case you decided you wanted to review it. Well,” he paused, “it’s more stream of consciousness than official report. But it should still answer the question of ‘what the hell were you even thinking’. If you want I can –”

“It’s fine like this,” Klaus cut in, snagging the paper before Gil could try to take it back. Reading Gil’s unfiltered thought process was the best hope of understanding his son. After this many years of Gil continuing to baffle though he didn’t hold out much of it. “Right. Carry on.” With that he walked away, allowing Gil to be swarmed with minions once again.

Someday, one of Gil’s airship-expulsion worthy plans won’t turn out to actually be at least halfway brilliant.

* * *

Well, Gil’s thought process was absolutely mad.

This really shouldn’t surprise him.

His thought process was always absolutely mad. At this point, Klaus thought he took it as a point of pride.

Unfortunately, for all the insanity of his plan, it was also extremely well thought out and damn near watertight.

Of all the times for Gil to be so aggressively competent.

Right, maybe he should just –

Wait.

Gil had assigned no extra spies to mingle into the soldiers evacuating the students. Klaus flipped back to the beginning. Had he missed – Surely somewhere in here –

But no. Klaus carefully scanned over every word Gil had written but he couldn’t find any mention of any extra spies being assigned to the actual student body. It was an easy thing to miss. An opening an enemy would have to be crazy to try to exploit and one almost guaranteed to be doomed to quick and violent failure.

But it was still an opening.

They were back on track.

* * *

“Gilgamesh!” The gaggle of minions fled at his approach. They didn’t even try to maintain any pretense of not running instead scattering like frightened geese, honking and all.

Gil tensed, obviously already expecting a problem. “Yes Father?”

“You didn’t send any spies with the students when you evacuated them.”

“Oh that,” he said, relaxing. “No I didn’t.” He didn’t turn back to his reports or motion his temporary minions over – Klaus had taught his son better than to give him anything other than his full focus – but he’d clearly already dismissed the topic of their conversation as unimportant. So many things Klaus needed to still work on with Gil. So many things he needed to fix.

“I’ll thank you, son, to pay attention when speaking to me.”

Gil immediately straightened. “Sorry Father.

Klaus gave a small nod of acknowledgement. “Now. Will you explain to me _why_ you didn’t? Cutting down on spies to send elsewhere only works if you’re not cutting corners to do so.”

“I’m not cutting any corners.”

When Gil paused Klaus raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. “I should certainly hope,” he said, “that I raised you better than to believe that ‘no I’m not’ is in any way an acceptable answer.”

“Of course not, Father,” Gil said quickly. He then he jumped into a – rushed but still admirably competent (of course it was) – explanation. “Unlike most of the airship, the employees at the school all know every single person who works with them. And they are always all informed when a new employee is added or when someone leaves. The soldiers with them are also assigned to the school and known by face and name by the entirety of the school’s staff. The staff is already on edge from the evacuation. There’s no way they’d believe anyone new coming in right now. Shy of posing as your own spies or just flat out praying no one notices the headcount is wrong, they wouldn’t have a chance.” Gil folded his arms like he had the perfect explanation to make up for his oversight. “Besides, the school has Madame Von Pinn.”

Klaus… had not considered Von Pinn. He may need to make some alterations.

* * *

Two hours after leaving Gil again Klaus made his way back toward the school. The truth is he’s a little disappointed in Gil right now. So much for competency. But success or failure the time was up now either way.

At his side, Boris glanced hesitantly down at his clipboard. “Herr Baron, shouldn’t we be focusing on the spies inside the airship?”

“We still are, Boris.”

“Your spymasters need to speak to you.”

“After this

“But the school’s been secure for hours. And we still don’t know –”

“Are you telling me how I should be running things, Boris?”

“O-Of course not, Herr Baron.”

“Good. Then come along.”

Jacob rounded the far corner, nonchalantly strolling forward. He dropped into a more formal posture when he caught sight of them but in no way sped up. “Herr Baron,” he said when he reached them. “You’re here about the bomb then?”

“Bomb!?” Boris cried.

“Gilgamesh found a bomb?”

“About an hour ago. He sent me to go find you. But I was feeling a bit hungry so I took a bit of a detour to the kitchens first. Gilgamesh was still figuring out the timer when I left but I figured you’d be down before it ticked down, whenever that will be.”

Jacob didn’t seem all that inclined to pick up his pace so Klaus matched his pace to his. “What sort of bomb is it?”

“Big. Sparky. With all due respect, Herr Baron you know I’ve never been good at munitions.”

“Don’t think I don’t know that it was purposeful so I couldn’t put you in charge of them.”

“Well I’ll be retiring soon so it won’t really matter either way, will it?”

Klaus huffed and held out a hand. “I’m assuming he sent you with some form of notes.” A crumpled handful of scribbles were deposited into his palm.

Boris – who'd kept giving the hallway in front of them suspicious glances like a fireball was about to burst out of it any second – directed his attention at Jacob. “You don’t seem surprised we’re here,” he said, narrowing his eyes. Jacob merely shrugged.

“When I took to long getting Klaus he could have sent someone else to tell him.”

“He should have.”

“Don’t be too hard on him Herr Baron. I’m pretty sure that bomb there tipped him straight into a fugue and we all know how hard it is for Sparks to keep track of the trivial things once they’ve gone mad.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Of course not, Herr Baron.”

When they finally reached the doorway Gil could be seen in the middle of the empty room below them, straddling the top of what could only be the bomb. It was a shapeless metal lump one and a half times as tall as a human and twice as wide as that. Gil had pried one of the panels off presumably with the hammer still embedded in the side of it. He thrust his entire right arm inside. Lightning raced up his arm and his usually untamable hair puffed out even worse than usual in a million directions. They reached the railing just as Gil pulled out a handful of sparking wires and yanked.

The modified timer stopped.

It had 57 seconds left on it.

Gil held his breath.

The timer didn’t change.

The bomb didn’t make any change.

Gil noisily released the breath he’d been holding and slid down off the casing. He walked over to a jury-rigged adaption to the inter-ship radio and flipped it on. “Bomb disabled. Send crew three in to start dismantling. And _someone_ tell me we’ve found even one of these muse damned spies. Or at least how the hell they managed to assemble an entire bomb _this size_ while hiding in a crowd of some of the most paranoid and heavily armed people aboard this ship.” Whatever the person on the other side said couldn’t be overheard from where Klaus was but it obviously wasn’t good news. “Right,” Gil snarled. “Of course not. Keep looking. And someone –”

“A fair showing.” The time Gil had spent talking had given Klaus the chance to come down from the railing, which meant he was directly behind his son when he spoke. Gil leapt three meters in the air, letting out a high pitched, extremely undignified screech.

“Father!” he squeaked, clutching at his chest. “What are you doing here?”

“I was told there was a bomb.”

“We think the spies brought it aboard in pieces and reassembled it up here.”

“And how did it get here?” Gil glared at the ground and let out an indistinct mumble. “Speak up Gilgamesh.”

Gil glared even harder. Klaus was a little surprised the floor wasn’t melting. “They impersonated our own spies and used the chaos of the evacuation to sneak into the school. The teachers and soldiers were expecting some form of spy so they must have accepted them as such. But I still don’t know how they managed it. It never should have worked! I’m still surprised they were dumb enough to try, let alone both dumb enough to try and smart enough to be successful with it!

“Never underestimate an enemy’s capacity for stupidity. Always plan for everything no matter how impossibly stupid it would be. There’s no such thing as an idea _no one_ would ever try.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gil grumbled. “I get it. I screwed up. I didn’t catch what I should have and –” Gil suddenly stopped. He cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. He looked at Klaus, calmly standing next to the bomb husk, then at the bomb itself, then Klaus again. “…Father, tell me you didn’t plan this.”

“Don’t worry. Despite your rather large oversight I’m not overly disappointed. I have confidence you’ll remember this lesson in the future.”

“So this whole thing was a **_TEST_** _!?”_

“Yes.”

“What the – WHY WOULD YOU EVEN _DO_ THAT!?”

“You were fine.”

“If I hadn’t found it, it would have blown up an entire floor of the castle!”

“But you did find it. As I knew you would.”

“A _FLOOR_ Father!” Gil yelled, waving his hands. “The castle is an airship! _It could have taken down the entire thing!”_

Klaus leaned over to better inspect the damage Gil had inflicted to the casing. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing you found it in time then, isn’t it?”

“And what would you have done if I _hadn’t_ found it?!”

“Oh don’t be so dramatic Gilgamesh. I could have shut it down remotely at any point. I wasn’t about to risk the lives of everyone aboard merely for a simple test.”

Gil buried his face in his hands and screamed.

**Author's Note:**

> Edited lines cut for snarkiness
> 
> Klaus hastily arranged his face into a ‘contemplating the empire’ glower to hide his smile. He couldn't let Gil see him being proud of him. Might give the boy a big head. Much better to never let him see it.
> 
> “It’s fine like this,” Klaus cut in, snagging the paper before Gil could try to take it back. Reading Gil’s unfiltered thought process was the best hope of understanding his son. Lord knew talking to him like a human being was out of the question.


End file.
